This application claims the priority of Japanese Patent Applications Nos. 2002-206534 and 2002-206535 filed on Jul. 16, 2002 and No. 2002-250406 filed on Aug. 29, 2002 which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic endoscope apparatus. More particularly, it relates to a configuration of connection wires and signal transmission for supplying power and video signals between an electronic endoscope which is a scope and a processor unit which is connected with the electronic endoscope.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an electronic endoscope apparatus, an electronic endoscope equipped, for example, with a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) which is a solid-state image sensor is connected to a processor unit via a cable and connector. Through these cable and connector, power is supplied and various control signals are transmitted from the processor unit to the scope while a video signal and various control signals are transmitted from the scope to the processor unit.
Thus, the scope is driven by DC power supplied from the processor unit via a power line while a video signal picked up by the CCD is transmitted to the processor unit via a signal line (transmission line). As the processor unit performs various types of color video processing on the video signal, images of the object under observation are displayed on a monitor.
However, with the electronic endoscope apparatus described above, the cable connecting the scope with the processor unit contains a power line and a plurality of signal lines. Consequently, the cable connector has a multi-pin architecture, which may cause bad connections or breakage of some connection pins in addition to being expensive.
Recently, CCDs have been growing in pixel count. This creates a need to connect various scopes equipped with CCDs which have increased but different pixel counts to a common processor unit.
The present invention has been made in view of the above problems. Its object is to provide an electronic endoscope apparatus which can use a common line for power supply and signal transmission, connect a scope and processor unit using a minimal number of lines, and form images in good condition even when scopes equipped with CCDs with different pixel counts are connected to a common processor unit.